William Law Quotes

He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.

No education can be of true advantage to young women but that which trains them up in humble industry, in great plainness of living, in exact modesty of dress.

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.

If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.

Be intent upon the perfection of the present day.

From morning to night keep Jesus in thy heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing but to have all that is within thee changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus.

If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you.

Joseph has lately endeavored to seduce my wife, and has found her a virtuous woman.

Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state.

All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.

Hell is nothing else but nature departed or excluded from the beam of divine light.

What could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self?

Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.

The greatest saint in the world is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice. It is he who is most thankful to God.

Nothing harms or destroys us but the wrong use of that liberty of choice which God has entrusted to us.

He that rightly understands the reasonableness and Excellency of charity will know that it can never be excusable to waste any of our money in pride and folly.

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?

Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.

The more we pay for any truth, the better is our bargain.

The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.

Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life.

Divine love is perfect peace and joy, it is a freedom from all disquiet, it is all content and happiness; and makes everything to rejoice in itself.

He who complains of the weather, complains of the God who ordained the weather!

The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity, but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least deserve it.

Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.

Until we are renewed in the spirit of our mind and illumined in every part, our very virtues are but taught practices grafted upon a corrupt bottom

Perhaps there cannot be a better way of judging of what manner of spirit we are of, than to see whether the actions of our life are such as we may safely commend them to God in our prayers.

If, therefore, a man will so live as to show that he feels and believes the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he must live above the world.

The obedience of men is to imitate the obedience of angels, and rational beings on earth are to live unto God, as rational beings in heaven live unto Him.

Where has the Scripture made merit the rule or measure of charity?.

God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.

Feasts and business and pleasure and enjoyments seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else; but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness.

Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.

If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.

We may justly condemn ourselves as the greatest sinners we know because we know more of the folly of our own heart than we do of other people's.

The eyes of our souls only then begin to see when our bodily eyes are closing.

Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God.

There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.

He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and a happy life.

Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will or rather our own will is our separation from God.

The greatest saint in the world is not he who prays most or fasts most it is not he who gives alms or is most eminent for temperance chastity or justice. It is he who is most thankful to God.

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains and studying night and day how to fly?